UN 


ULTURE    AND    SERVICE 


AN  ADDRESS  DELIVERED  AT  THE 
SIXTIETH  ANNUAL  COMMENCEMENT 
OF  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  MICHIGAN 
BY  PROFESSOR  CALVIN  THOMAS,  '74, 
OF   COLUMBIA   UNIVERSITY 


CULTURE  AND  SERVICE 


ADDRESS    DELIVERED    AT   THE    SIXTIETH    ANNUAL   COMMENCEMENT. 

BY   PROFESSOR  CALVIN  THOMAS,   '74,   OF 

COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY 


Ladies  and  Gentlemen:— 

The  day  before  yesterday,  as  it  seems  to  me,  but  thirty- 
years  ago  this  morning,  as  men  compute  time,  !  stood 
upon  this  platform  to  address  a  Commencement  audience, 
as  the  last  of  fifteen  speakers  chosen  from  the  graduating 
class  to  enlighten  the  public  of  that  day.  Thus  the  thing 
was  done  in  those  remote  times.  Like  the  other  speakers, 
1  had  been  privately  drilled  for  my  performance  by  Presi- 
dent Angell.  We  two  would  enter  this  great  hall,  we  two 
alone,  with  no  one  to  molest  him  or  make  him  afraid,  and 
he  would  station  himself  in  a  critical  posture  at  long  range 
and  hear  me  speak  my  piece;  and  notwithstanding  that 
unfailing  geniality  of  temper  which  has  endeared  our 
President  to  thirty-four  successive  graduating  classes,  1 
assure  you  that  that  audience  of  one  was  the  most  nerve- 
racking  audience  that  1  have  ever  spoken  to  from  that  day 
to  this.  However,  1  survived,  and  so  did  he;  and  to-day, 
after  the  swift  flight  of  thirty  years,  I  find  myself  again 
here  to  address  a  Commencement  audience,  but  this  time 
without  the  advantage  of  a  preliminary  rehearsal.  The 
President  does  not  know  what  1  am  going  to  say,  and  his 
judicious  blue  pencil  has  had  no  opportunity  to  do  execu- 
tion upon  my  manuscript.  The  more's  the  pity  for  you 
and  me. 

But  I  have  a  particular  reason  for  referring  to  that  epi- 
sode of  ancient  history,  because  I  drew  from  it  a  bit  of 
wisdom  which  has  been  of  great  value  to  me  in  the  inter- 


239405 


vening  years;  a  maxim  for  which  I  have  often  thanked 
President  Angell,  and  of  which — I  promise  you  solemnly— 
you  shall  have  the  benefit  in  the  ordeal  now  impending. 
It  was  my  task  on  that  occasion  to  demolish  Taine's 
philosophy  of  art,  and  to  do  it  in  six  minutes.  1  pleaded 
hard  for  ten,  but  the  inexorable  reply  was:  "No;  boil  it 
down.    The  world  will  never  miss  what  you  leave  out!" 


What  1  have  to  say  this  morning  will  relate  to  the 
ethics  of  work,  — a  subject  of  immense  and  universal 
interest,  seeing  that  work  is  the  great  law  of  life  for  us 
all.  You  who  leave  the  University  to-day  as  graduates, 
are  presumably  looking  forward  to  a  life  of  labor.  You 
do  not  expect  to  be  idlers.  The  vast  majority,  no  doubt, 
will  find  themselves  face  to  face  with  that  same  interest- 
ing dilemma  that  has  confronted  the  human  species  since 
the  days  of  our  arboreal  ancestry, — the  dilemma,  work  or 
starve.  And  you  will  work.  There  may  be  some  who 
are  conscious  of  a  special  talent  for  leisure,  and  who  would 
welcome  a  chance  to  exercise  the  gift  rather  frequently. 
Still,  even  they  do  not  seriously  envy  our  so-called  leisure 
class  who  live  to  amuse  themselves;  for  the  victims  of 
perennial  leisure,  whether  they  wear  the  clothes  of  a 
gentleman,  or  of  a  tramp,  form  one  of  the  most  unfortunate 
elements  of  the  entire  population. 

I  think  it  safe  to  assume,  moreover,  that  the  great 
majority  of  you  not  only  expect  to  work,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  but  are  fairly  cheerful  over  the  prospect.  You 
may  not  feel  exactly  the  eagerness  of  the  hero  rejoicing 
to  run  a  race,  but  you  are  not  worrying.  You  are  already 
accustomed  to  labor  in  one  form  and  another;  and  while 
you  may  not  always  have  found  it  exhilarating,  it  has 
been  in  the  main  quite  tolerable.  You  have  no  misgivings 
as  to  your  ability  to  make  friends  with  what  appears  to 
be  the  natural  order  of  the  world,  and  all  you  ask  is  a  fair 
chance  to  show  what  you  are  good  for.  And  all  that  is 
well. 

But  now  it  may  be  that  there  are  some, — it  would  be 

—2- 


strange  if  there  were  not  some, — to  whom  this  descriptton 
is  not  fully  applicable.  There  maybe  those  who  are  now 
and  then  oppressed  by  the  bigness  and  turmoil  of  the 
world ;  whose  skies  have  been  darkened  by  doubts  and 
perplexities  that  have  occasioned  sinkings  of  the  heart; 
who  have  tried  with  imperfect  success  to  extort  from  the 
Sphinx  some  clear,  coherent,  and  reassuring  answer  to 
the  questions:  Why  am  I  here?  To  what  end  the  toil 
and  the  moil?  Is  it  worth  while?  Now,  to  those  who 
are  suffering  from  that  distemper,  work,  if  it  be  rightly 
conceived,  is  the  very  best  of  remedies. 

The  distemper,  let  it  be  said  in  passing,  is  not  a  bad 
sign,  being,  for  certain  temperaments,  a  part  of  the  grow- 
ing-pains of  youth.  I  speak  with  the  more  assurance  on 
this  point,  because  I  myself  was  hit  veiy  hard  in  my 
college  days  by  the  melancholia  of  adolescence.  1  lived 
through  months  of  profound  and  not  very  picturesque 
misery ;  and  ever  since  then,  the  collegian  who  is  unhappy 
excites  my  particular  interest.  The  other  sort — the  man 
who  was  never  unhappy,  who  never  had  any  doubts  or 
perplexities,  who  is  possessed  of  steady  nerves  and 
unstampedable  self-complacency,  who  has  all  the  pushing 
and  staying  qualities^he  should  look  out  for  himself. 
There  is  danger  ahead  of  him.  In  such  times  as  these  he 
may  easily  bring  up  at  the  age  of  fifty,  if  he  is  not  careful, 
as  a  mere  ordinary  millionaire.  The  choicer  blessings  are 
reserved  for  him  who  is  capable  of  unhappiness ;  for  if  he 
do  but  hold  fast  and  fight  out  his  little  battle  with  the 
goblins  of  pessimism,  he  shall  win  and  presently  emerge 
into  the  serene  air  where  abides  the  joy  of  the  intellec- 
tual life. 

To  what  end,  then,  do  we  toil? 

Now,  in  stating  the  question  thus  broadly,  let  us  frankly 
recognize  at  the  outset  that  a  broad  answer  to  it  is  not 
absolutely  indispensable.  fThe  proximate  incentives  to 
activity,  that  is  the  familiar,  every-day  motives,  are  quite 
sufficient  to  make  life  interesting  and  enjoyable  for  a  very 
large  part  of  mankind.    A  man  works  for  food,  and  shel- 

—3- 


ter,  and  raiment.  He  works  that  he  may  marry  the  woman 
of  his  choice,  make  a  home,  and  enter  into  the  joys  of 
family  affection.  He  works  for  wealth,  power,  influence, 
distinction.  If  he  has  public  spirit,  he  works,  perhaps, 
on  philanthropic  lines.  He  tries  to  better  the  lot  of  the 
poor,  to  promote  public  enlightenment  and  morality.  He 
throws  himself  into  the  service  of  an  institution,  a  party, 
a  reform  movement,  and  endeavors  to  make  his  opinions 
prevail.  He  labors  for  the  advancement  of  knowledge,  of 
art,  of  righteousness.  And  in  this  multiform  and  ever- 
renewed  effort  of  self-assertion,  which  is  life,  it  is  not 
absolutely  necessary  to  carry  along  and  make  frequent 
reference  to  a  chart  of  the  whole  solar  system.  This  is  a 
beneficent  provision  of  nature  to  the  end  that  our  energy 
our  will  to  live  and  to  do,  may  not  become  sicklied  o'er 
with  the  pale  cast  of  thought.  For  we  are  not  primarily 
thinking-machines.  Underneath  the  thinking-machine, 
antedating  it  in  time  and  exceeding  it  in  importance,  at 
least  for  the  generality  of  men,  is  a  bundle  of  inherited 
instincts,  aptitudes,  propensities,  and  of  acquired  habits, 
and  tendencies,  which  propel  us  along  through,  life  with 
very  little  reference  to  an  ultimate  Wherefore.    \ 

Nevertheless,  it  is  precisely  the  problem  of  civilization 
to  bring  these  unreflecting  proclivities,  these  non-rational 
tendencies  and  passions,  into  subjection  to  the  thinking 
mind;  or  if  not  exactly  that,  to  bring  them  at  least  into 
harmony  with  a  rational  and  comprehensive  view  of  life. 
And  therefore  we  do  need,  after  all,  the  larger  chart.  We 
need  a  theory  which  looks  backward  and  forward,  and 
oeeks  to  define  our  personal  relation  to  the  mighty  process 
of  which  we  are  a  part.  In  other  words,  we  need  a 
philosophy  which  shall  say  something  more  than,  Go 
ahead  and  ask  no  questions.  Intelligent  men  and  women 
can  not  forever  be  dodging  the  hard  problems,  and  saying 
to  one  another,  Work  while  'tis  called  to-day.  Perhaps 
it  may  be  better  now  and  then  not  to  work,  but  to  take  a 
rest  and  cogitate,  or  go  off  and  have  some  fun.  It  is  a 
rather  shallow  doctrine  which  was  promulgated  a  few 


years  ago,  in  the  heyday  of  agnosticism,  in  that  well- 
known  specious  jingle: — 

Our  duty  down  here  is  to  do,  not  to  know; 

Live  as  though  life  were  happy,  and  life  will  be  so. 

As  if  work  were  a  sort  of  narcotic  taken  to  kill  the  pain 
of  thought!  Our  duty  is  rather  to  do  and  to  know,  and 
to  ffnd  our  happiness  in  doing  because  of  a  large  and 
serene  faith  in  the  goodness  of  life. 
(  The  goodness  of  life!  )  That  is  the  pivot  of  the  whole 
question.  If  life  be  good,  then  we  may  well  work  to 
enjoy  it  and  make  it  better  still ;  on  the  other  hand,  if  it 
be  bad,  that  is  essentially  bad,  and  not  merely  bad  in 
spots,  then  it  were  the  part  of  wisdom  to  follow  the  pre- 
cepts of  Buddha  and  Schopenhauer,  and  live  as  little  as 
possible. 

But  pray  do  not  indulge  the  fear  that  you  are  now  about 
to  listen  to  an  analysis  and  a  refutation  of  the  pessimist's 
argument.  I  have  no  such  dismal  intention.  To  be  sure, 
it  is  a  good  plan  to  face  the  argument,  to  study  it.  Per- 
haps it  is  particularly  salutary  for  us  Americans,  living, 
as  we  do,  in  the  whirl  of  activity,  and  inclined,  as  we  are, 
to  look  upon  the  Hustler  as  the  perfect  flower  of  the  genus 
homo  sapiens,  to  retire  into  ourselves  now  and  then  and 
meditate  upon  the  form  and  pressure  of  life  as  they  are 
among  our  brethren  in  India,  where  the  Hustler  counts  as 
a  fool ;  or  as  they  were  among  our  own  ancestry  in  the 
Middle  Ages,  when  life  was  regarded  as  an  evil,  or  at  least 
as  a  tainted  blessing,  to  be  valued  only  as  the  necessary 
preparation  for  a  better  life  to  come.  In  our  love  of  com- 
fort, and  our  hot  pursuit  of  the  temporalities,  it  is  a  whole  - 
some  discipline  to  turn  our  thoughts  occasionally  to  those 
medieval  forbears,  whose  aspiration  for  perfection  led  them 
to  hate  the  joys  of  this  life  and  to  spend  their  days  in 
subduing  and  crucifying  the  natural  man.  I  say  it  is  well 
to  read  of  these  men,  and  anon  to  linger  with  them  in  the 
spirit  beneath  their  haunted  skies ;  for  only  thus  do  we 
come  to  realize  what  our  boasted  heirship  of  the  ages 

—5— 


V 


means,  and  what  was  involved  when  Europe,  at  the  time 
of  the  Renascence,  set  its  face  resolutely  and  joyously 
toward  the  love  of  life. 

But  after  all,  pessimism  and  asceticism  are  not  for  us. 
Save  as  sporadic  manifestations,  they  have  had  their  day 
in  our  modern  Occidental  life.  Poets  and  philosophers 
may  here  and  there  take  the  misery  of  existence  for  a 
specialty,  but  they  make  no  progress  in  convincing  us 
that  existence  is  really  miserable.  Their  efforts  are  but 
as  refluent  eddies  in  a  great,  onward-rushing,  ever-deep- 
ening, ever-widening  river.  Their  arguments  make  but 
little  impression  upon  us,  though  we  are  susceptible  to 
their  poetry.  For  us  the  acceptance  of  life  as  good  has 
become  instinctive;  so  that  the  opposite  attitude  strikes 
us  as  a  morbid  eccentricity,  calling  for  special  explanation 
in  bad  heredity  or  exceptional  misfortune.  Put  the  ques- 
tion of  the  goodness  of  life  to  eager  childhood ;  to  youth 
in  the  ardor  of  effort;  to  the  rapturous  lover,  or  the  soldier 
in  the  stern  joy  of  conflict;  raise  the  question  in  any 
company  of  busy  men  and  women, — and  they  will  hardly 
understand  you.  They  will  class  you  as  a  sufferer  from 
dyspepsia  or  as  an  inchoate  lunatic.  Our  instinct,  our 
natural  feeling,  and  finally  our  sciense,  tell  us  that  life  is 
good,  it  being  the  condition  and  the  measure  of  all  other 
goods  whatsoever.  It  is  for  us  to  accept  this  unreasoned 
testimony,  and  then  to  feed  and  fortify  our  faith  into  a 
rational'  and  inspiring  conviction. 

If  we  grant  this  postulate  of  the  goodness  of  life,  the 
first  corollary  is  that  somehow  or  other  work  itself  must 
be  a  blessing,  and  ought  to  be  a  source  of  joy.  We  can 
not  regard  it  in  the  old  way  as  a  necessary  evil,  or  as  part 
of  a  primeval  curse  connected  with  the  fall  of  man  from  a 
state  of  blessed  idleness.  It  can  not  be  merely  the  price 
paid  for  good  things  to  be  enjoyed  in  moments  of  leisure. 
If  you  take  any  such  view  as  that,  you  start  straight  for 
the  camp  of  the  pessimist.  £oxifjvoxk_be_but  the  price 
paid  for  goods  to  be  enjoyed  at  leisure,  then  the  price  is 
too  high.    We  have  the  spectacle  of  a  billion  and  more  of 


•*  A  H  y 


human  beings  toiling  from  morn  till  night, — and  for  what? 
For  rewards  which  in  themselves  are  seldom  worth  what 
they  cost.  If  work  be  an  evil,  or  only  a  means  to  an  end, 
then  the  human  race  is  being  swindled  all  the  time,  and  a 
general  strike  for  shorter  hours  and  better  pay  would  be 
in  order.  If  such  a  theory  were  sound,  the  tramp  would 
be  the  true  philosopher. 

Not  so,  however,  if  a  man's  work  is  his  fun.  Not  so, 
if  he  can  bring  himself  to  see  in  the  motto  labor  ipse 
voluptas,  not  a  pretty  paradox,  nor  a  bit  of  idealistic 
moonshine,  but  a  solid  scientific  proposition  and  a  work- 
able scheme  of  life. 

Once  more,  then,  to  what  end  do  we  toil? 

1  purpose  to  speak  of  two  ends  which  are  pre-eminently 
worthy  of  consideration,  and  which  at  first  will  probably 
seem  to  you  to  conflict  with  each  other.  And  then  pres- 
ently, I  shall  try  to  make  it  appear  that  these  two  goals 
— culture  and  service,  as  I  shall  call  them — lie  in  the  same 
direction  and  are  in  fact  but  different  phases  of  the  same 
thing. 

Some  forty  or  fifty  years  ago  Emerson  declared  that  the 
"word  of  ambition"  at  that  time  was  culture.  How  old- 
fashioned,  how  almost  antiquated,  the  oracle  now  sounds! 
To-day  the  word  of  ambition  is  service.  Our  foremost 
citizen  preaches  the  strenuous  life,  and  like  the  man  who 
believed  in  original  sin,  he  does  his  best  to  live  up  to  his 
conviction.  And  his  words  and  his  practice  find  ready 
response  throughout  the  whole  hierarchy  of  light  and 
leading.  We  are  all  infected  with  the  zeal  of  making 
ourselves  useful;  and  in  proportion  as  we  have  come 
under  the  dominion  of  this  sentiment,  the  old  goddess  of 
Culture  has  been  having  a  hard  time  to  keep  her  altar - 
fires  aglow.  1  do  not  mean  so  much  that  the  thing  is  on 
the  wane  as  that  we  no  longer  talk  about  it  and  put  it 
forward  as  our  "word  of  ambition."  There  seems  to  be 
a  feeling  that  culture  is  something  that  will  do  very  well 
for  women,  but  is  a  dubious  recommendation  for  a  man. 
It  is  associated  in  many  minds  with  a  sort  of  passive, 


contemplative,  and  mildly  cynical  estheticism.  It  suggests 
books,  and  pictures,  and  music,  and  endless  futile  talk 
about  them,  it  connotes  the  perfume  of  roses,  and  a 
dainty  aversion  to  the  sweat  and  smoke  and  dust  of  the 
human  conflict. 

And  with  that  of  course  we  have  no  patience.  How 
can  we  have  when  we  are  caught  in  the  maelstrom  of  the 
strenuous  life?  When  we  are  frantically  hustling  to  get 
rich;  madly  rushing  about  the  country  on  business  of  a 
hundred  kinds,  in  ever-increasing  anxiety  about  the  rap- 
idity of  our  transit  and  the  comfort  of  our  accommodations ; 
yelling  furiously  at  political  conventions,  converting, 
reforming,  fighting  one  another,  and  gathering  in  the 
heathen  with  Krag-Jorgensens  and  smokeless  powder? 
Verily,  to  raise  at  such  a  time  a  still  small  voice  on  behalf 
of  culture  might  seem  to  be  an  unpromising  enterprise. 

None  the  less  I  shall  take  the  risk;  for  1  think  that 
culture,  if  we  but  understand  it  aright,  is  an  excellent 
thing,  and  good  for  everybody,  without  regard  to  sex, 
occupation,  or  previous  condition  of  lethargy.  If  that 
proposition  is  to  be  made  plausible,  however,  we  can  not 
regard  culture  as  a  matter  of  esthetic  refinement  merely, 
important  as  that  may  be.  Nor  can  we  be  entirely  satis 
fied  with  the  formulation  given  by  the  great  English 
apostle  of  culture,  notwithstanding  the  winsomeness  of 
his  literary  method;  for  Matthew  Arnold  identified  culture 
with  intellectual  enlightenment.  For  him  it  meant, 
"knowing  the  best  that  has  been  thought  and  said,"  so 
as  to  guard  against  narrowness  and  fanaticism.  It  meant 
the  "  reading  of  many  books,"  to  the  end  that  One  might 
know  which  book  to  use  and  thus  avoid  becoming  the 
thrall  of  one  book  or  one  idea.  It  was  "to  let  the  mind 
play  freely"  about  a  subject  in  the  light  of  the  world's 
accumulated  wisdom.  All  of  which  is  excellent,  admir- 
able. Still,  knowledge  is  not  the  whole  of  culture.  A 
man  may  read  books  and  liberalize  his  mind,  and  at  the 
same  time  allow  his  sympathies,  his  will  and  his  energy 
to  go  unfed  and  suffer  atrophy.    He  may  become  a  highly 

—8— 


enlightened  cynic,  good  for  nothing  but  to  sit  in  his  tub 
of  Diogenes  and  think  thoughts  as  the  human  procession 
moves  past.  He  may  let  his  mind  play  all  about  a  sub- 
ject, may  get  such  a  very  broad  and  clear  idea  of  it  in  all 
its  phases,  that  he  does  not  know  what  to  do  and  loses 
the  power  of  decision.  Such  a  man  has  not  the  whole 
edifice  of  culture,  albeit  he  has  one  important  pillar. 

Let  us  then  go  back  to  the  fountain-head;  to  the  orig- 
inal promulgation  of  the  modern  secular  gospel.  It  is  the 
poet  Goethe  to  whom  we  owe  the  first  clear  and  large 
working  out,  in  theory  and  in  practice,  of  the  seemingly 
simple,  but  in  reality  rather  complex  idea,  that  the  object 
of  life  is  to  live;  to  enter  as  fully  as  possible  into  the 
possession,  use,  and  enjoyment  of  our  human  inheritance. 
This  fulness  of  life  he  called  culture.  He  did  not  mean 
by  it  the  pursuit  of  knowledge  alone,  though  that  was  a 
highly  important  part  of  his  program.  Nor  did  he  mean 
esthetic  pleasure  alone,  though  he  laid  great  stress  upon 
that  too.  Least  of  all  did  he  mean  any  kind  of  passive 
or  vegetative  existence ;  for  he  was  a  great  worker,  ancr 
the  favorite  word  of  his  ethical  vocabulary  was  streben 
(striving).  That  for  which  he  stood,  if  we  conceive  him 
aright,  is  symmetrical  human  nature ;  in  other  words,  the 
active  participation  of  the  entire  man— emotions,  intellect, 
will,  energy,  ethical  sense,  esthetic  sense— in  the  busi- 
ness of  living.  This  business  he  conceived  as  sufficiently 
interesting  and  enjoyable  to  be  its  own  complete  justifi- 
cation. "Wherefore,"  he  once  inquired,  "wherefore 
this  expenditure  of  suns,  and  planets,  and  moons,  of  stars, 
and  milky  ways,  of  worlds  made  and  making,  if  a  fortunate 
man  is  not  at  last  to  enjoy  his  existence?" 

Fulness  of  life;  the  joyous  participation  of  the  entire 
man  in  the  business  of  living,  conceived  as  in  itself  some- 
thing noble  and  inspiring, — this  is  the  simon-pure  doctrine 
of  culture,  which  should  not  be  confused  with  any  of  its 
later  perversions,  attenuations,  or  sophistications.  There 
is  a  passage  in  Mr.  John  Morley's  life  of  Diderot,  which  1 
desire  to  quote  in  this  connection.  Says  Mr.  Morley,  in 
speaking  of  his  hero: 

-9— 


"He  was  wholly  uncorrupted  by  the  affectation  of 
culture  with  which  the  great  Goethe  infected  part  of  the 
world  a  generation  later.  His  own  life  was  never  made 
the  center  of  the  world.  Self-development  and  self- 
idealization  as  ends  in  themselves  would  have  struck 
Diderot  as  effeminate  drolleries.  The  daily  and  hourly 
interrogation  of  experience  for  the  sake  of  building  up  the 
fabric  of  his  own  character,  in  this  wise  or  in  that,  would 
have  been  incomprehensible  and  a  little  odious  to  him  in 
theory,  and  impossible  as  a  matter  of  practice." 

Now  what  shall  be  said  of  this  deliverance?  Certainly 
I  do  not  wish  to  stand  for  an  "effeminate  drollery,"  nor 
for  anything  which  is  either  "odious  in  theory,"  or 
"impossible  as  a  matter  of  practice."  Well,  the  truth  is 
that  Mr.  Morley,  notwithstanding  his  distinguished  ability, 
has  given  in  the  ardor  of  contrast  a  radically  wrong  account 
of  Goethe's  philosophy  and  its  practical  implications. 
However,  let  that  pass.  This  is  not  a  lecture  upon 
Goethe,  nor  the  place  for  a  comparison  of  the  first-rate 
German  with  the  second-rate,  or  third-rate  Frenchman. 
Let  them  be  judged  by  their  fruits.  But  there  is  one  little 
sentence  in  that  passage  quoted  to  which  I  wish  to  draw 
particular  attention,  because  it  is  vitally  related  to  what  I 
wish  to  say.  Mr.  Morley  observes,  evidently  with  eulo- 
gistic intent,  that  Diderot's  "own  life  was  never  made 
the  center  of  the  world."  Is  this  true?  I  do  not  mean 
whether  it  was  true  of  this  particular  Frenchman,  but 
whether  it  ever  was  or  ever  can  be  true  of  any  one. 
Would  it  not  be  nearer  the  mark  to  say  that  his  own  life 
was  the  center  of  the  world  for  Diderot,  and  that  the  like 
is  true  of  Mr.  Morley  and  of  you  and  me  and  everybody — 
saint  and  sinner,  learned  and  lewd,  wise  and  foolish? 
Let  us  dwell  for  a  moment  on  this  matter  of  the  self- 
centered  life. 

We  hear  much  in  our  day  about  selfishness,  or  self- 
seeking,  versus  altruism ;  of  individualism  versus  socialism, 
as  if  these  words  stood  for  opposing  tendencies  between 
which  it  were  necessary  to  make  a  choice.    Our  moralists 

—10- 


preach  the  duty  of  self-sacrifice,  and  while  they  mean  the 
right  thing,  they  somstimes  seem  to  imply  that  it  is  a 
man's  duty  to  sacrifice  his  real  self,  his  happiness  and 
welfare,  to  the  demands  of  a  mysterious  but  terribly 
insistent  corporation  called  society;  as  if  it  were  somehow 
required  by  the  eternal  power  that  makes  for  righteous- 
ness, to  be  continually  taking  bitter  pills  for  the  good  of 
mankind  at  large.  But  this  is  not  so.  The  work  that  we 
do  as  social  beings — the  work  that  you  will  do  in  the 
conscientious  pursuit  of  your  chosen  vocations,  or  in  the 
furtherance  of  any  good  cause  that  may  commend  itself 
to  your  judgment — does  not  come  under  the  head  of  self- 
sacrifice,  but  of  self-realization;  and  just  in  proportion  as 
you  do  it  reluctantly,  and  with  a  feeling  that  you  are 
really  sacrificing  your  Self,  will  be  apt  to  be  ineffective 
as  social  service. 

It  is  a  most  interesting  point  of  view  of  the  new  psy- 
chology that  Self,  which  used  to  be  thought  one  and  indi- 
visible, is  irTTeality  a  very  complex  and  multiple  affair. 
Each  one  of  us  has  many  selves,~and  they  do  not  live  in 
harmony,  but  make  war  upon  one  another.     My  self  is 

^  not  only  my  body  and  my  appetites,  but  it  is  whatever  I 
care  for,  think  about,  love,  or  hate ;  in  short,  whatever  is 

]  a  real  part  of  my  inner  life.  Honor  and  reputation  are 
more  vitally  a  part  of  me  than  is  my  arm,  which  I  may 
leave  upon  a  surgeon's  table  without  feeling  that  my  self 
has  suffered  any  serious  hurt  or  diminution.  Professor\ 
William  James,  our  most  eminent  American  psychologist, 
distinguishes  four. selves:  a  material  self,  a  social  self,  a 
spiritual  self,  and  a  pure  ego;  and  he  discusses  all  our 
possible  activities  under  the  head  of  self-seeking  and 
self-preservation.  Nothing  is  said  about  self-sacrifice. 
The  word  does  not  occur  in  the  index  to  the  two  big  vol- 
umes. And  the  reason  is  that,  scientifically  speaking, 
there  is  no  such  thing.  A  race  of  self-sacrificers  would 
soon  become  extinct.  What  is  called  self-sacrifice  is 
taking  sides  with  the  wider  social  self  against  the  nar- 
rower material  self.    When  a  gentleman  gives  his  seat  to 

—11— 


a  lady,  he  does  not  sacrifice  himself — let  us  hope, — but 
takes  the  part  of  his  chivalrous  social  self  against  the  old 
Adam.  He  does  not  do  the  thing  for  her  sake,  but  for  his 
own,  though  he  probably  has  an  illusion  to  the  contrary. 
His  act  makes  him  "feel  better,"  feel  more  of  a  man; 
and  if  it  did  not,  he  would  not  do  it. 

Now  ethical  merit  is  the  progressive  realization  of  the 
social  self;  the  substitution  of  higher,  that  is  wider, 
tribunals  for  those  of  petty  jurisdiction.  But  the  self  is 
the  center  of  the  world  for  all  of  us.  We  begin  in  infancy 
with  only  the  narrow  material  self.  The  baby  is  the 
supreme  egotist.  Then  we  learn  to  live  in  the  life  of  the 
family,  the  school,  the  neighborhood;  and  to  find  in  that 
wider  life  a  deeper  satisfaction  than  in  that  which  con- 
cerned only  our  own  bodies  and  appetites.  Thus  we  go 
on  expanding  like  the  wave-rings  in  a  lake.  We  identify 
ourselves  with  the  life  of  the  city,  the  state,  the  nation, 
the  world;  with  the  human  race  and  its  history,  with 
science,  art,  education,  religion.  It  is  this  progressive 
realization  of  the  larger  self  which  constitutes  the  zest  of 
life  and  of  work.  And  it  is  enough.  We  must  distin- 
guish, however,  between  the  joy  of  living,  and  the  so- 
called  pleasures  of  life, — with  some  of  which  one  must 
e'en  do  battle  as  best  he  can. 

So  then  the  important  question  is  not  the  location  of  a 
man's  center,  but  the  extent  of  his  periphery.  Take  care 
of  Number  One,  is  a  perfectly  sound  maxim,  only  it  must 
be  given  the  wide  interpretation.  He  who  tries  to  live 
by  it  in  the  sense  ordinarily  carried  by  the  words  will 
presently  find  that  Number  One  is  not  being  taken  care 
of  at  all,  but  grossly  neglected,  and  is  in  consequence 
gravitating  back  to  the  status  of  his  simian  ancestry. 

But  you  are  perhaps  saying  by  this  time,  What  does 
all  this  practically  amount  to?  What  great  difference 
does  it  make  whether  we  call  ourjjevotion  to  large  en£§ 
by  one  name  or  by  another?  Is  it  not  after  all  a  matter 
of  words? 

Well,  it  is  more  than  a  matter  of  words,  because  that 
—12— 


which  I  have  called(culture— fulness  of  life  for  its  own 
sake,  the  progressive  realization  of  the  larger  self — is  per 
se  the  very  best  social  service  that  can  possibly  be  ren- 
dered. Nothing  in  the  world  can  be  more  useful  to  society, 
whether  by  that  word  we  understand  the  neighborhood, 
the  state,  the  nation,  or  the  world,  than  men  and  women 
who  are  simply  living  out  their  lives  on  a  high  plane  of 
aspiration  and  endeavor.  It  matters  not  so  much  what 
one's  work  may  be.  I  am  not  here  commending  a  doc- 
trine which  is  good  only  for  the  philosopher,  or  the  poet, 
or  for  the  ambitious  dreamer  who  conceives  some  large 
scheme  of  benefaction  for  his  fellow-men.  The  quiet 
pursuit  of  one's  vocation,  so  it  be  not  pursued  in  a  spirit 
of  narrow  selfishness,  is  social  service  of  a  most  admirable 
kind.  It  is  not  well  to  idealize  the  strenuous  life  as  a  life 
of  hustling,  which  must  spell  failure  unless  it  lead  to  the 
external  rewards  commonly  called  success.  We  can  not 
spare  any  of  the  types  of  noble  living.  There  is  room  for 
them  all,  and  they  are  all  social  service.  Thoreau,  retir- 
ing to  the  quietude  of  Walden  Pond,  and  there  pursuing 
his  observations  and  meditations,  was  performing  a  social 
service,  — and  a  better  one  than  if  he  had  gone  to  Boston 
and  tried  to  organize  a  public  charity.  That  which 
Wordsworth  called  the 

best  portion  of  a  good  man's  life, 
His  little,  nameless,  unrememhered  acts 
Of  kindness  and  of  love, 

is  within  the  reach  of  everybody.  And  we  know  from 
that  immortal  sonnet  of  the  blind  Milton,  that  sometimes 

They  also  serve  who  only  stand  and  wait. 

And  is  it  not  a  rather  comforting  thought  that  in  simply 
living  the  larger  social  life,  in  recognizing  its  obligations 
and  responding  loyally  and  cheerfully  to  their  call,  we  are 
working  steadily  in  our  own  interest?  What  better 
inspiration  can  the  young  collegian  take  with  him  for  his 
career  than  the  assurance  that  in  the  long  run  the  Genius 
of  Life  does  in  very  truth  build  happiness  and  usefulness 

—13- 


out  of  the  same  material  ?  Convinced  of  that,  he  will 
not  worry  about  success,  since  failure,  in  any  large  and 
important  sense  of  the  word,  is  impossible.  Happy  in  his 
work,  which  is  the  best  symbol  of  our  human  dignity,  he 
will  go  his  cheerful  way,  neither  groaning  overmuch  under 
the  burden  of  his  social  responsibility,  nor  losing  heart 
because  things  sometimes  seem  to  go  wrong,  and  men  are 
what  they  are,  and  life  is  what  it  is. 

In  particular  let  us  not  become  the  bondslaves  of  any 
tyrannous  social  sentiment  which  assumes  to  treat  us  as 
if  we  ourselves  were  only  a  means  to  some  future  social 
end;  as  if  our  toil  were  for  the  sake  of  posterity;  for  the 
sake  of  a  coming  man,  or  a  common  Utopia.  Some  of  our 
writers  seem  to  think  that  the  dream  of  the  ages  is  going 
to  be  realized  in  the  perfect  social  subordination  typified 
by  an  ant-hill,  or  a  bee-hive.  They  would  have  us  sweat 
for  that.  On  the  other  hand,  a  German  philosopher  who 
is  just  now  having  his  day,  and  who  died  four  years  ago 
in  a  retreat  for  the  insane,  reached  the  conclusion,  after  a 
series  of  remarkable  philosophical  somersaults,  that  we  are 
here  to  prepare  the  way  for  an  unmoral  Uebermensch,  or 
Over- man,  conceived  as  a  sort  of  combination  of  Caesar 
Borgia,  Napoleon  Bonaparte,  and  a  Bengal  tiger.  To 
breed  this  delectable  creature,  Nietzsche  would  have  us 
repudiate  our  whole  legacy  of  Christian  ethics,  and  throw 
to  the  winds  all  our  present  ideas  of  morality,  so  far  as 
they  are  based  on  sympathy  and  respect  for  the  feelings 
and  the  rights  of  others.  In  other  words,  he  would  have 
us  go  back  to  the  jungle  and  begin  over  as  "blond  beasts" 
of  prey. 

These  two  types  of  folly,  the  imbecility  of  extreme 
socialism,  and  the  madness  of  extreme  individualism, 
balance  each  other  and  suggest  the  wisdom  of  letting  the 
coming  man  take  care  of  himself.  He  will  do  it  anyway, 
no  matter  how  much  we  may  worry  and  speculate  about 
him  and  try  to  create  him  in  our  own  image.  Just  what 
turn  social  evolution  may  take  in  the  coming  century,  no 
one  can  know.     New  discoveries  of  science,  new  inven- 

-14— 


tions,  may  change  the  aspect  of  life  and  bring  new  prob- 
lems, even  as  they  have  done  in  the  century  that  is  past. 
The  final  goal  we  can  not  see ;  what  we  can  see  is  that 
between  a  man  on  the  one  hand,  and  a  socialistic  bug  or 
the  individualistic  tiger,  on  the  other,  there  are  differences 
well  worth  saving.  Meanwhile  it  is  our  inning,  and  let 
us  play  the  magnificent  game  for  all  it  is  worth,  following 
that  peerless  rule  laid  down  by  the  illustrious  German 
poet : — 

Wide  horizon,  eager  life, 
Busy  years  of  honest  strife, 
Ever  seeking,  ever  founding, 
Never  ending,  ever  rounding, 
Guarding  tenderly  the  old, 
Taking  of  the  new  glad  hold, 
Pure  in  purpose,  light  of  heart, 
Thus  we  gain  at  least  a  start. 


—15— 


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